


oh i beg you, can i follow

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [21]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Gen, an idea for a drabble turned into a behemoth, click in to read my WoL be sad and learn how to make friends, spoilers for all of SHB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 05:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19823308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: The true question lies on the tip of her tongue, unwilling to be spoken:Is a tempered, light filled girl still mortal, Thancred?...The Crystarium is celebrating the return of darkness, but the guest of honour is nowhere to be found.





	oh i beg you, can i follow

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this has been rewritten like three times and I can't write no more. Happy Thancred Appreciation Life!!
> 
> Find me on fheythfully.tumblr.com

She’s nestled between a shipping crate and the cold steel of a resting cannon when the footsteps come to find her. Thancred’s, going by the purposefully heavy tread; there may be a gunblade on his back now but he was a rogue first, and his loudly telegraphed steps are an easily recognizable offer: withdraw further into her hiding spot and he will pretend to have never seen her, or remain as she is and make due with his company.

It’s a tempting thought, to be left alone in the night with only herself and her troubled mind. Her body tenses and she almost does it, but Ardbert’s face flashes before her eyes. He wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone in a time like this. He would have remained stubbornly at her side, staring out at the same scenery she was and offering his words of support. She can’t have him with her, not anymore, but she can easily imagine his disappointment if she were to push away the Scions after everything they had been through.

Her heart still hurts any time she thinks of the other Warrior and the hole he’d left behind. She feels both bereft of a dear friend and warm, an aching gap in her soul that is empty yet mended at the same time.

The footsteps draw closer and Lia forces herself to relax and remain as she is, sprawled out under the clear night sky blanketing the Crystarium. Out of the corner of her eye she watches Thancred make the corner and she turns, greeting him with one brow raised. It is a silent question of why he’d felt it was necessary to leave the on-going festivities of the Crystarium to come seek her out. Undoubtedly, there was much drinking and merriment to be had below; she had partaken in it for a bell or two before retreating to her spot. And after everything that’s happened, she had not expected to see Thancred until well past the dawn, and probably nursing a killer hangover to boot.

“Quite the place you have here,” he says in lieu of answering her. He glances about him—she’s hidden away at one of the highest points in the city accessible, unless one decided to scale the towering pillars and crystalline roofs. There is faint music from the markets and the Wandering Stairs where the heart of celebration is, but other than that, there is only the silence of the glimmering stars and the distant mountains on the horizon. 

It is both peaceful and lonely here in equal measure.

It is precisely what she’d wanted.

Lia remains silent but shifts to make room for him. “Why’d you come?” She asks the moment he’s settled down. At some point in the night he’d lost his coat (possibly to Ryne; she wouldn’t be surprised to find the girl snoozing on a bench somewhere) and the bare skin of his arm brushes up against hers. She can’t help the shivers that come across her body at the thought of someone touching her so casually after she’d nearly become a Warden. The body Thancred now so casually allows beside him had nearly twisted into a cruel mess of limbs and flesh and light, eager to turn them just the same. 

The thought of it makes bile rise to her mouth and her heart skips beats, terrified and distraught and ashamed.

She’s withdrawn into herself before she can even acknowledge the motions, body chasing her own warmth in lieu of someone else’s. It makes her wish once more that Ardbert yet remained with her, untouchable yet relentless and comforting.

There had been no running away from the man dogging her steps. It had irked her plenty when he first appeared in her inn room, and then again the second time; but as the weeks passed she had grown to accept it. She had grown to  _ expect _ it, even; glimpses of him out in the field, and their conversations in the safety of the Pendants’ apartment. Unlike with the others, speaking with Ardbert did not make her feel judged or as if she was in danger of disappointing their perception of the vaunted Warrior of Light. When she spoke with Ardbert it was with a man her equal, one who had been just as responsible for his world as she has been with the Source. 

By the gods, she missed Ardbert. She’d last seen this view of Lakeland with him at her side and now she was alone and one shard closer to a whole. It did not seem like a fair trade: a friend for a fragment of her soul. She would choose the former in every choice given, in every life lived. 

“Well, when the guest of honour disappears from the reveleries, the attendees are bound to notice.” Startled, Lia drops her gaze from the horizon and to Thancred’s face. But he only smiles at her, amusement clear in his eyes. “I kid, I kid.  _ We  _ noticed though, and grew concerned.”

Ah. Y’Shtola must have sent him then. “Sorry to hear you got babysitting duty,” Lia grumbles, drawing her knees up close to her chest. She rests her chin on them and gazes once more out into the darkness of the distant mountains.  _ Has Bismarck returned?  _ She cannot help but wonder. Her mind does not let her rest from that time in Amaurot, of Emet-Selch and Hades and Ardbert. She knows that things are meant to be over, at least for now—but they never truly  _ were _ . Somewhere, Elidibus was no doubt growing stronger in his hate for her; somewhere, the Empire was making ready to march. 

And the Warrior of Light was sitting here, not even on her own  _ planet _ , brooding about things she could not change. Things that had been left out of her control when she should have been down there celebrating her victory with the rest of them, instead of caving to her own fears and misgivings and grief over a man who had been both her and not. 

She flinches in surprise when an unexpected hand makes contact with her arm and turns back to Thancred. “I’d volunteered,” he corrects her. The lingering smile on his face is soft in the starlight cast above them, and she’s almost managed to forget that his real body still rests in the Source. Too long hair and a face in need of a shave, with a bandana the others had teased him over; that is how she remembers him and had seen him last. But for him, it had been five years since he’s seen her last—and on the First his body had reformed alongside his soul’s image, in which he was young once more and untouched by the hands of Lahabrea or his trip through the Lifestream.

It was like looking at a memory with the First-hardened Thancred imposed over it. It was strange, but then again, what  _ hadn’t  _ been lately?

The hand on her arm sets Lia’s teeth on edge, having someone touch her so casually only days after she had white ichor running through her veins, burning up marble and wood whenever it spewed forth from her lips. She itches to shake it off. 

“Did Ryne go to sleep?” She asks. The girl had energy aplenty in the wake of their success, but she was still young and tired from all she had done. The healing she had done on Lia alone, prior to their trip to the Tempest, had left her pale faced and sunken-eyed and the guilt and gratitude both bubble within Lia’s chest, adding on further to the maelstrom of emotions swirling within.

The hand is withdrawn as Thancred chuckles. His eyes find the stars above them and his posture is as relaxed as Lia’s seen him since—well, since a very long time. “She did. Fell asleep right next to the twins, though thankfully not for the same reasons.” At her pointed silence, his smile notches up into a grin. “I’m afraid those two are nowhere near as close to holding their alcohol as well as they think they are. Out like babes, and now safely in their rooms for the remainder of the night.” 

“Where  _ you  _ should be,” Lia is quick to point out. “Your injuries from Ran’jit were surely strained in—well.” She trails off, unable to say the name dancing on her tongue.  _ Hades _ . She has not finished processing yet, has not managed to file away the ghostly recreation of Amaurot or Emet-Selch’s genuine request at the end of it all. It will all fall away somewhere within her in time, laid to rest alongside all the other bones of things she does not wish to think about. 

If Ardbert were here, he’d tell that she should. That it was unhealthy to bury them under the earth of her thoughts, where she only encountered them in the grips of a nightmare.

“I’m faring fine,” Thancred replies and she can feel his eyes on her again. His gaze feels just as heavy as his hand had been. “It is you, my dear, that should be the one taking her rest. It’s well-deserved, wouldn’t you say?”

The endearment is old and familiar and makes her want to curl up even further into herself, build walls of Garlean steel outside her body so as to not let anyone in. It reminds her of a hot desert too long ago, of a smile she hasn’t seen on Thancred’s face since. Of a camaraderie they haven’t had since she carried his limp body on the back of a stolen magitek from the blazing, crumbling ruins of a Garlean stronghold. 

It’s enough to break her, out here in the lonely night with the both of them staring at the same stars and the faint sound of music coming from below. For so long she had managed to fare alone, to rely on no one but herself to shoulder her hopes and fears, and then Ardbert had come along and it was as if her soul  _ had  _ recognized its missing part, even before the mysterious words of the long-dead Amaurotine in the long-dead city. It had made her want to actually open up herself to someone, made her heart in her chest flutter with desire to not be alone, not anymore. For so long her mantra had been that the Warrior of Light does not get lonely, especially not in the wake of her victory; that the Warrior of Light is a woman of force and steel, of victory and surety. 

And the deepest secret she’s been holding for days now, close to her chest and barely even shared with Ardbert—

That the Warrior of Light assuredly, did not, for the briefest of hours on a long, light filled night, wish to run away and die in peace as a monster. 

“Is it?” Slips out from her mouth. The music from the markets has struck up a cheerful tune in stark contrast to the turmoil she struggles to contain from leaking into her words. “I nearly killed you all. Nearly became a monster myself. It was only luck that led to the light within me settling.” 

_ Luck _ , by which she means, of course, the death of Emet-Selch. The moment between her last thought on him and the one right now has not afforded her the clarity she seeks on how it makes her feel. There is no satisfaction in it, not like there had been with Thordan or Zenos. 

There should be. He wanted to Rejoin the First to the Source through genocide, she knows this, and yet.

_ Yet _ . 

Something sad and old within her that she has no name for is grieving.

The hand on her arm is back again and she tilts her head to peer at Thancred. “Hey,” he says quietly, the smile gone from his face. In its place is an earnest appeal, a trust she feels is undeserved considering she was moments away from  _ eating  _ them all. “But you didn’t turn. You’re still mortal. You’re still  _ you _ .” The hand on her arm moves to cover her hair in a move similar she’s seen both Urianger and him do with Ryne; a motion of comfort, and for a brief second she’s bitterly amused at being comforted like a child. But Thancred’s fingers do not linger in one spot and he smoothes back the flyaway strands around her forehead, then runs them gently over the thin skin of her ears. 

For a heartbeat, she looks at him and lets herself be swallowed by the tidal wave of fear that has been cresting at the edges of her sanity. “Am I?” she asks. Uncurling herself she faces him fully and brings the hand he’s laid upon her to her face, not bothering for once to hide the trembling in her limbs. “Am I mortal, Thancred? Or am I—” the words tangles on her tongue, sharp and painful. “—Ascian? Lightwarden? Do I still look mortal to  _ you _ ?”

The world has thrown so many things at her and she had bested them all, had overcome their attempts at taking her life. She’d chalked it up to Hydaelyn’s blessing before, but now with the knowledge that her Mother was a  _ primal _ —and she’d believed Emet-Selch on this, the truth settling in her breast as if she’d always known—then what did that make Her Warrior of Light? 

The true question lies on the tip of her tongue, unwilling to be spoken:  _ Is a tempered, light filled girl still mortal, Thancred? _

She’d only taken his hand in a moment of uncertainty, in a desire for someone else to feel her skin and tell her that the blood within was warm and not the sizzling heat of light. But he moves his fingers over her cheek and then to the corners of her eyes, gentle in a way she’s never seen before. “You do,” he says quietly. She’s trembling before him, heart beating like a bird’s and pupils blown wide in fear. “You’re still you, Lia.” 

His fingers ghost over her lips and for a second it feels as if time stops, as if they’re the only two in the world awake in the new-old and brilliant night. She doesn’t remember the last time she’d let herself be this vulnerable with another, had let them see the fears which drew breath within the pit of her stomach and crawled through her bloodstream. It almost makes her sob in inexplicable relief—she swallows down the feelings rising in her chest and closes her eyes as a few tears fall anyway, caught only by Thancred’s other hand rising up to sweep them away. 

He lets her collect herself in silence, until her eyes are open again and she’s staring into his own. Lia’s lips part beneath his feather-light touch and she can’t help the shaky inhale, the feeling that gets stuck somewhere between her lungs and her tongue. “Promise, Thancred?” She whispers against his skin, the calluses on his fingers rough against her lips. “Do you promise me that I am  _ me _ ? That you won’t ever let me become a monster?”

She hadn’t had to speak the words with Ardbert. He had already known, had seen the thoughts through the emotions grappling on her face when she had woken up blinded and in light-fuelled agony. But Ardbert was gone—had never really  _ been  _ there—and she cannot expect those not of her own soul to recognize what she needs, to know the things to say when she hides her fears so well.

If she wanted the weight on her shoulders to lift—truly, eagerly wanted it—then she had to be the one to reach out. To bring down the walls of stone and steel around her heart and recognize the figures of the Scions burning bright around her, willing to walk with her until her last breath.

In the darkness and the starlight of the night, the expression on Thancred’s face shifts. He looks as serious as he did before they braved the fires of the ghostly Amaurot, when he thanked her for all she’d done for him and vowed to always have her back. “I promise,” he says and sweeps the pads of his fingers over her bottom lip, before moving to gently cradle her chin in a reassuring grip. “And if you ever doubt it—if you ever think that you are anything but the kind, brave person you are—then look to me.” His other hand cards through her hair now and the tears are coming again, falling fast over her cheeks and onto the stone beneath them. 

“I will be right there at your side, reminding you again and again.”

Something in her chest breaks and she exhales, leans further into his warmth and grip on her. “Okay,” she says, closing her eyes and letting the tears fall freely now. “I will. I  _ will _ .”


End file.
